Having A Clean Kitchen Will Help You Lose Weight

Trending News: Your Messy Kitchen Is Making You Fat

Why Is This Important?

Long Story Short

A study from the Cornell Food and Brand Laboratory has suggested that having an untidy kitchen leads to eating more high calorie foods, especially if you already feel stressed.

Long Story

We all know that what we put in our fridge and kitchen cupboards can affect our weight, but it now appears that keeping on top of the cleaning and washing up may have an important influence on our diet too.

In an interesting study published on the website of the Cornell Food and Brand Lab, researchers found that women who were left to kill time in a messy kitchen were more likely to eat unhealthily than those waiting in a neat kitchen.

As published in the journal Environment and Behaviour, 101 women were asked to wait for 10 minutes in a kitchen. Half were led to a chaotic kitchen where plates were left stacked up and papers were strewn around, while the other half stood in a clean, orderly kitchen.

There were bowls containing cookies, crackers and carrots that the women were able to snack on at their leisure.

After 10 minutes, the women in a cluttered kitchen had eaten on average 65 more calories than those in a neat environment.

The study’s lead author Lenny Vartanian, who is Associate Professor of Psychology at Australia’s University of New South Wales says in the report: “Being in a chaotic environment and feeling out of control is bad for diets. It seems to lead people to think ‘everything else is out of control, so why shouldn’t you be?’"

While the study was conducted with women, Vartanian believes that the results would be the same for men too.

An extra aspect of the experiment was that prior to entering the kitchen some of the women were asked to write about a time they felt out of control while others wrote about a situation they had under their control. Those who had written about a loss of control ate 100 more calories.

These results seem to add weight to the hypothesis that feeling things are out of control in your life in general is a disaster for diets, which will come as little surprise to those of us who are prone to comfort eating when things are stressful.

So if we want to make sure we stay in shape maybe the first exercise we add to our daily routine is washing the dishes.

Own The Conversation

Ask The Big Question: Does the same apply for your entire home?

Disrupt Your Feed: Washing up is the new working out. Instead of heading to the gym I’m going to do a big session in the kitchen.

Drop This Fact: On average 45 million Americans go on a diet each year but only 5% manage to keep the weight off for five years.